Free Shadows on a Sword by Karleen Bradford Page B

was a long silence. No one would speak of Peter’s defeat, or the reasons for it, but thoughts of it hung heavily in the air.
    “Continue. I would hear your plans.” Peter spoke regally, as if graciously giving permission to one of his underlings.
    A faint flush colored Godfrey’s cheeks. He sat down abruptly.
    “We will march cautiously to Nicaea,” he said. “I will send engineers ahead to widen the track, which I understand is narrow in places, and scouts to warn us of any possible ambush.” He looked meaningfully at Peter. It had been a lack of just this kind of planning that had led to the hermit’s downfall.
    Amalric stood behind Godfrey. When Theo caught his eye, Amalric raised an eyebrow. His easy-going good humor seemed to be restored. He looked as if he were enjoying himself.
    They waited at Nicomedia for three days until all the troops were assembled and ready. There were fields here where the armies could spread out and camp. Peter and the remains of his army made their own camp somewhat apart from the others. Theo had heard that the monk was a great preacher, but Peter held no congregation here. He spoke little to anyone and seemed to seethe with a bitterness that escaped only through his burning eyes.
    The morning chosen for their departure dawned bright and clear; the sun now gave a hint of the heat that was to come in the months ahead. They rounded the eastern end of the Sea of Marmora and headed for Civetot. The poppy-strewn fields at Civetot pushed out in a triangle into the southern shore of the sea. It was here that Peter’s followers had camped, and here where the Turkish army had flooded in after ambushing and destroying Peter’s army in the narrow defile to the south. The sultan’s men had massacred almost everyone: women, children, old men, priests. Theo gazed at the scene and his mind went back to the three wanderers he had seen in the tavern in Semlin. They must have been here, the girl and the child, camped somewhere on this very plain. The boy—he would have been among the soldiers, fighting. Near the shoreline, a tall tree lent some shade to the field, a cairn of stones on the ground under its branches. What had happened here? What was war really like? The waves of the sea lapped at the shore with deceptive peacefulness. The blood-red poppies swayed in the breeze.
    They turned south, through the pass where Peter’s men had been ambushed. The engineers had done their work well; the way had been widened, but bones still lay strewn around the entrance and among the rocks at the sides. Human bones—with shreds of skin still stretched over them here and there, and remnants of moldering cloth among them. A series of wooden crosses marked the cleared track. A hush fell over the column of knights as their mounts picked their way through.
    “Did you see the huts on the hillsides with roofs thatched with sticks and twigs?” Amalric asked that night when he sought Theo out after his evening meal. “I saw goats on top of one of them, prancing around! One was even eating leaves that were still growing from it.” His voice was hard and brittle, full of careless laughter, but there was a new look in his eyes.
    It could almost have been fear, Theo thought, but dismissed the idea immediately. Amalric afraid? Impossible. He laughed with him. Yes, he had seen the goats. But in his mind, all he could see were the bones.
    A week’s steady marching brought them to Nicaea. As they drew near the city, Theo could see massive walls rising straight out of the water on the western side. The same walls ran around the other three sides; there were towers at regular intervals.
    “That will be a tough nut to crack,” Amalric said as they drew nearer and the walls loomed high before them. “Now at last I wager we will see real fighting.” His face was flushed and eager. Any doubts or fears he might have been harboring had obviously been cast out. He fingered the pommel of his sword nervously; the palfrey he